Abbasi gazed nervously around the room where three senior US officers were sitting calmly before him.

The men — two air force colonels and a navy commander — were part of a specially convened tribunal to decide Abbasi’s fate.

For almost three years the 24-year-old college dropout from Croydon, south London, has been held without charge at Camp Delta, the maximum security prison used by America to detain suspected Islamic terrorists.

Since first being informed of his incarceration by The Sunday Times in January 2002, Abbasi’s mother, Zumrati Juma, has tirelessly campaigned for his release.

Abbasi, she and his lawyers argue, is nothing more than one of a small group of idealistic young Muslim men who found themselves caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the Abbasi who sat before the tribunal panel last month was not that. Unclassified US government papers filed in a district court in Washington DC — which outline the tribunal proceedings — reveal for the first time that Abbasi was, and remains, a hardline Islamist.

Based on interrogations of the former student and other captured suspects, the Americans claim Abbasi underwent extensive military training at terrorist camps in Afghanistan, met senior Al-Qaeda officials and was present when Osama Bin Laden visited the camps on at least two occasions.

More disturbingly, he is alleged to have volunteered for a suicide mission and is thought to have been captured on the front line, defending the airport at Kandahar, the Taliban’s former stronghold in southwest Afghanistan.

The case against Abbasi has not been contested in anything resembling a British court of law and he claims that much of his evidence was extracted under duress. However, the US papers obtained by The Sunday Times appear to leave little doubt about Abbasi’s commitment to jihad and his antipathy towards America.

“Do not be fooled into thinking that I am in any way perturbed by you classifying me as an ‘enemy combatant’,” he told the tribunal. “In fact, quite the contrary. I am humbled that Allah would honour me so.

“Do you really think I would like to be considered a friend to a nation that massacred whole native American (Indian) tribes? That killed, raped, enslaved and oppressed the blacks of Africa?” Abbasi went on to refer to the United States as “terrorist America” and castigates it for dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the second world war. “My eyes light up aflame and I yearn for justice, sweet justice, against the tyrant that hurts innocent civilians,” he said.

Abbasi’s case highlights the quandary that George W Bush and Tony Blair face in dealing with the 550 detainees at Guantanamo Bay. While many of the Muslim men sent to Camp Delta have been released, others may have more to answer for.

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